Step Taken.

Today I did my first “road race”. Technically, it wasn’t a race; it was a “community century ride”, but everyone knows it’s really a race. So that’s how I approached it. I was pretty pumped. I just started riding a road bike last week and since then I’ve ridden everyday except for yesterday when I took a rest day. The class of the field in the 400 rider “race” were 2 locals from Vernon (don’t quote me on this…). The one dude, Olaf, is 54 but in his day won the World Juniors TT. He’s still insanely quick and some even claim he is still the best time trialer in Canada. He holds the Silverstar hill climb record of 48 miniutes, 6 minutes ahead of the 2nd best time. And the guy who holds the 2nd best time for the SS climb is the other in the “class of the field” club. Tom Stewart is a Cat. (not an actual cat. Well, maybe…) 1/2 rider and can ride with the best in the country on any given day. Tom Stewart is actually on the Balance Point Racing team (I’m a member of sorts…) and is starting to apply scientific reasoning to his training so he may even get better than he is in the coming years even though he is already 44 years old. Man, quick old guys!

Anyways, so the race started in Armstrong, BC, went out to Salmon Arm and came back to Armstrong. The End. Hahahah, jk, jk… But no, well yeah, that’s what the race was.

It started off fairly flat, then got into some “undulating terrain” (thanks David Goldstrom). There was a “climb” at about 15km, but nothing serious went down. There was still a pack of about 60 riders that continued on for the next 40 km. There were a few times when things got exciting. A few guys started churning away and tried to be heroes, but none succeeded. At the 55km mark there is the real climb. After screaming through Salmon Arm for a few minutes, you round a corner and stretching up into the heavens is this road. At its steepest it is 16% grade, so it’s wall-ish. But the brutal thing is that it’s over 2km long. I was still in the lead pack at this point and sitting in about 20th. I had watched a bunch of Lance in the mountain stages on Youtube the day before, so I could visualize what it took to get from the bottom of a hill to the top. But being a brand new rider, and not particularly climber-weight at my 172lbs, I just wanted to hang on to the pack that at that time had dwindled down to about 30. A few guys couldn’t contain themselves and started making huge moves just before we hit the climb. I held my own and readied my climbing state of mind. I started a secret breathing technique that we are developing, and started the climb. I leapt out of my saddle, and started the LA. I just kept pwning people the whole way up. I could see Olaf and Tom in the distance since they were part of the group of guys making moves at the base. I kept passing guys and before I knew it I was sitting 3rd, about halfway up the climb. I kept the beat going and pranced my way towards the top, catching and passing Tom at one point. Olaf was in a class of his own, schooling everyone. So I didn’t catch him unfortunately, but I continued with Tom to the top along with an Elite triathlete from Revelstoke. I was red-lining pretty good at this point. The guys who I was with wanted to keep the hammer down and try to catch Olaf. I tried this for a bit, but I was hurting…my inexperience was starting to show. After maybe 15 minutes I peeled off and waited for the peloton. They swallowed me up and soon after we caught Tom and Mr. triathlete. We were now in a group of 20 or so, giving chase to the Junior TT champ from, I dunno, the 70s? My head was down and I was pushing pretty good. This whole time though, while pushing the pace, I had naively looked over the ever-essential fuelling process. I stopped drinking and eating as those things are in scarce commodity while exploring the Pain Cave. I continued to race hard, and slowly I started to run out of juice. I desperately slurped at what remaining drink I did have in an attempt to reverse my sensations, but the meager sugar stores were all but burnt up in my ravaged body. With about 9 km to go, there were 2 fairly small pitches. I got up the first one, but on the second one the pack got away from me like sand slipping through open fingers. I went on solo. My race was done. I was glycogen depleted and losing tons of time because of the fact that I was solo. And things got worse. Well, if you consider taking a wrong turn and doing an extra 11km, yeah, I guess they got a bit worse. 5 km into this detour, I realized that it was, in fact, a detour. It was the way we went at the beginning, but obviously not the way to go to get to the finish line. So I brought ‘er in, slowly but surely and afterwards chilled in the blazing sun of Armstrong. I punished a bunch of cookies, Gatorade and coke and then sat through the most excruciatingly slow draw-prize sesh ever!

But anyways, today was a sweet learning experience. I got to test my riding fitness against some pretty solid riders. I surprised many, including myself to a very large degree, and I showed that I could do decent in future road races if I decide to do any. Sellars was very impressed, especially since on paper he is overall a slightly better rider and since he’s over 30 lbs lighter, likely a way better climber. But I guess in a true hammerfest of a test like the Salmon Arm Alpe D’Huez, more things are taken into account than lactate balance point and absolute wattage values. Very obvious when I put like 2 minutes into him on the climb… He really wants me to do some Xterras and other summertime races…we’ll see…

Road riding is a great form of cross training. You can do it day in, day out without having to worry too much about body breakdown like you would doing activities like running. Speaking of which, I got a sweet tip the other day from Andrew about running. First of all, you can’t do big days running day in, day out like you can cycling or skiing (there are a few exceptions of course). The reason for this is the high impact experienced by your legs. A sweet tip to try next time on your long run: try taking walking breaks every 15 minutes or so (you can play with this time a little bit). While running, the synovial fluid in your knees (other joints too I suppose) is pounded out of the joint and is dissipated into the interstitial fluid in the surrounding area. Losing this lubrication is one of the main reasons why running is so harsh on the body. When you walk, it relieves the impact and allows the synovial fluid to be regenerated. At the end of your run, you will experience much shorter recovery times. Walking during a run has another benefit: if you are targeting your free fatty acid metabolism (ie, long slow distance), it is sort of a check up that ensures you are in fact doing your training in this zone. It slows down any sugar burning that may be occurring and really homes in on the FFA zone and the STF (slow twitch fibers).

Back to this things I was talking about cycling: Riding on a wattage-trainer also has huge benefits as you can quantitatively monitor training progress as well as monitor restfulness. These are the reasons why I have made the decision to make it a part of my summer training program for this year.

I should peace. I gotta pack up to head to Van.

Thomsen